Microsoft Office

You know those “top 25 random things about you” lists that are going around on Facebook (and elsewhere)? I’ve received a few too many in the past few days. My colleague David Salaguinto must have been looking over my shoulder this weekend because his Office OFFline comic today matches the reality of my FB and email inboxes. Yours too? I ran out of time this weekend to inflict on my friends and coworkers my own version, so for now I’ll borrow his (and then I’ll get back to serving up the latest Office help-and-to info for saving time and money. Honest.)

Ok, I havent’ received a single one of these ‘annoying’ 25 things about you’ lists, and i’m feeling quite left out of being annoyed.

Team Excel blog posted some useful information for you Excel warriors out there.

When gathering data in Excel it is common to start with information found in a variety of sources, frequently lists or tables located on the Internet. Customers often copy and paste this data into Excel from the original source, but unfortunately this can also unintentionally paste many additional objects into the spreadsheet besides the data. These objects (shapes, text boxes, controls, etc.) are often not noticeable to the user after the paste, but can result in slower performance and larger file sizes. One step customers can take to avoid unwanted, hidden, and invisible objects in their document is to find and remove the objects after the paste operation as part of their data cleansing process.

The following steps will help you find and delete all of the additional objects in your Excel 2007 worksheet.

The first thing you want to do is verify that you have additional objects on your spreadsheet. The easiest way to view a sheet’s objects is to turn on the on the Selection Pane (on the Home Tab go to the Editing Chunk > click the Find and Select Dropdown > select the Selection Pane option making the pane visible). Looking at the selection pane you will see a list of all objects on the current sheet and an indication if the objects are visible or hidden. If the selection pane is blank then you do not have extra objects on the sheet.

Once you have the selection pane open and verified that you have objects on the sheet, the next step is to put your spreadsheet in Design Mode if it is supported on your current workbook. Design Mode will only be enabled in Excel if your sheet contains certain types of controls. Turning on Design Mode will allow you to select all controls, not just the basic shapes and form controls.

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From Office OFFline and our community podcasters to the latest in demos optimized for mobile devices, we’ve got a podcast for you. Enjoy! And don’t forget to let us know what you like.

What are podcasts?
A podcast is an audio or video file that is distributed on the Internet. Some podcasts serve as entertainment, such as TV show episodes, cartoons, or the latest music. Other podcasts offer training, “how-to” overviews, step-by-step demonstrations, and tutorials on a particular subject. Much of this content is produced and shared by people just like you.

Unlike multimedia files that you download or stream to your computer one file at a time, podcasts can part of a series whose “episodes” can be downloaded on a schedule and automatically updated if the content changes. Subscribing to podcasts is an easy way to keep track of new content from your favorite authors. Subscriptions also let you discover new content that covers a variety of subjects that may be of interest to you.

The name “podcast” derives from the combination of the terms “iPod” (one of the first portable media players) and “broadcast.” While you can watch podcasts on your computer like any other Web video or audio file, most people enjoy podcasts on their portable media players, like the Zune or the iPod. Think of podcasts as downloadable TV or radio shows that you can watch or listen to no matter where you are.

Let Microsoft and Silverlight help you build your sweetie a Valentine’s Day card!

Build your own Valentine’s card. Microsoft and Silverlight have created a website to help you build a Valentine’s Day Card. There are three options. Finish all three to send your Valentine’s email.

Silverlight Valentine’s card FAQ

Q: How do I create my customized Valentine’s card?

A: There are four steps:

Click on and login to either your Flickr or Windows Live Spaces account, then select the picture you want to put on your card.
Click on and write your personalized greeting
Click on and select the tune that best fits your greeting
Click on to send an email with your customized picture, greeting and tune. Note that the greeting will be sent using your default email application. You can then add text to the message and send to your love.

Q. I selected a picture and now I cannot seem to close the dialog, what should I do?

A. This is by design, select another button and the dialog will disappear.

Q. I have photos in my Windows Live Spaces account but I can’t select any, what is wrong?

A. You can only use photos that are designated to public consumption. If you want a picture to be used, define it as a public access picture.

Q. I selected many photos from my Windows Live Spaces account but only one photo is selected in the card, why is that?

A. The application only supports one image to be used in the greeting.

Access Team Blog has posted a plethora of new templetes for your business and working pleasure.

Click the link above to get the templete links on Access Team Blog.

Here are some of the new tweaks:

Some of the modifications include:

* Updated color schemes,
* New getting started screen,
* Video’s to demonstrate how to use the database and modify the database,
* Improved some of the database functionality to make it easier to use and more consistent, and
* Expanded the Students database to make it easier to track meta data about guardians relationships with a many-to-many junction table.

For example, here is one of the templete know-how:

the Task Management Database template.

Prepare the database for use
When you first open the database, Access displays the Getting Started page. To prevent this page from displaying the next time you open the database, clear the Show Getting Started when this database is opened check box.
Close the Getting Started page to begin using the database.

To make sure all the database content is enabled, use the following procedure:
In the Message Bar, click Options.
In the Microsoft Office Security Options dialog box, click Enable this content, and then click OK.
For more information about enabling database content, see the article Decide whether to trust a database.
Collect data through e-mail
You can collect task information from e-mail users by sending them a data entry form in an e-mail message. When users return the completed form, the data can be processed and stored in your task list.

On the Task List form, click Collect Data.
Follow the instructions in the Collect data through e-mail messages wizard to collect data from the specified e-mail recipients.
Search for a task or contact
The Quick Search box lets you quickly find a task on the Task List form, or a contact on the Contact List form.

Type the text you want to search for in the Quick Search box, and then press ENTER or click Go.
Access filters the list to show only those records that contain the text you searched for. To return to the full list, click Show All Records.
Filter the Task List
On the Task List form, you can filter the list of tasks, and save your favorite filters for future use.

Apply filters by right-clicking the form and selecting the filters you want.
Click Save Filter.
On the Filter Details form, enter a filter name and description, and then click Close.
Use the Filter Favorites box to apply a saved filter, or click (Clear Filter) to remove the filter.
Show or hide columns
On the Task List form and the Contact List form, some fields (columns) are hidden by default. Click above to read more!

From the sharepoint blog: Like many who work inside of a large organization, I frequently find myself swamped in a deluge of PowerPoint files.

You, too, can create a Slide Library
Now let me get one thing clear up front: I’m not what you might call a “SharePoint savvy” guy. But the process for setting up a Slide Library on My Site was very straight-forward.

First, I opened up my profile on the corporate intranet. Then, I clicked Site Actions and then clicked Create.

Which then led me to this page …

On the New page, I entered in a name for the slide library, whether I want the link to this library to show up in Quick Launch, and if I want to keep a version of each slide after editing.
So now I have a blank Slide Library. Yay! But I hear some of you asking the obvious question “That’s great, but how do I populate the Slide Library with slides?”

Well never fear, because you have the option to either Upload slides directly to the Slide Library from the site (see the graphic above), or you can publish slides to your Slide Library from with PowerPoint.

To do that, open the presentation that you want to publish to your Slide Library in PowerPoint 2007. Click the Office Button in the top left corner, point to Publish, and click Publish Slides. You’ll then see the Publish Slides dialog box.

Select all the slides that you want in your Slide Library, and click Publish.

Then go to your Slide Library and you will see the slides you just added.

So now that you’ve created a Slide Library and added slides to it, it’s time to take it out for a test drive. Do you remember that Reuse Slides feature in PowerPoint that I mentioned earlier? That’s where we can access the Slide Library from inside PowerPoint.

To reuse slides from your Slide Library, on the Home tab, in the Slides group, click the arrow button below New Slide, and select Reuse Slides. Then, in the Reuse Slides task pane, click Open a Slide Library, navigate to your Slide Library, and click Select.

From The Live Writer Blog: We’re excited to share that Windows Live Writer 2009 is now officially available for download with Windows Live Essentials!

This is the same version of Writer as the release candidate from last month. If you’ve already installed the release candidate you do not need to upgrade at this time.

Windows Live Writer 2009
Version 14.0.8050.1202

Release Highlights (jump to full feature list)

Sharing photos and video
Here are some of the ways that Writer makes sharing photos and video on your blog even easier than before:

Crop, tilt and new photo treatments
Starting with the basics, Writer now has native editing features for photos - like crop and tilt - in addition to improved border treatments. The alignment commands in the toolbar now work with images so it’s easy to select multiple photos and, for example, center-align them.

To the right is an example of photo that is titled, right-aligned, and uses the “Instant photo” border (HINT: click the photo to see what happens).

Photo albums
It’s also much easier to insert multiple photos at once as either individual thumbnails or a Windows Live photo album.

Download HERE.

Full Feature List
In addition to the highlights of this release, here’s the list of all the major new features added since Windows Live Writer 2008:

New border treatments (including Instant Photo)
Crop and tilt photos
Insert multiple photos
Toolbar alignment commands enabled for images
Insert and upload Windows Live photo albums
Insert and publish video to YouTube
Additional spell checking languages: Arabic, Basque, Bulgarian, Catalan, Croatian, Czech, English (Australia), Estonian, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Indonesian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Malay, Polish, Romanian, Russian, Slovak, Slovenian, Turkish, and Ukrainian
Server-side tagging (for supported blogs)
Type-down filtering in the Open dialog
Twitter, Digg and Flickr Plug-ins
Improved blog account setup
Lightbox and Windows Live Spaces inline preview support
Improved category control: adding categories, type-down filtering
Tabbed view switching
AutoLink glossary
Smart quotes/typographic characters
Word count
Support for bidirectional languages (like Hebrew and Arabic)
Tabs for view switching
Updated look and feel

pptPlex is a plug-in that explores an alternate method for presenting a PowerPoint slide deck. Using pptPlex, you can present your slides as a tour through a zoomable canvas instead of a series of linear slides.

Inside Office Onine, Nancy Buchanan, from Office at Work and Microsoft Office Labs bring you a new Microsoft Office Powerpoint plugin that will add pizzaz and jazz to your presentations.

As Nancy describes, pptPlex adds functionality to PowerPoint 2007 allowing you to deliver slides from a virtual canvas instead of one-after-the-other. Imagine that you were going over a presentation with a colleague and had all of your slides printed out and spread on a large table. With all of the slides visible at once you could easily pick up a slide so you could discuss its points, then put it down and grab another, or even hold 2 slides side-by-side so you could easily compare them. pptPlex gives PowerPoint this flexibility; you can move to and from slides easily with transitions so smooth that you can jump all over your presentation without ever getting lost. Learn more about pptPlex in this article, including where to get it and how I created a presentation about the planets in the solar system using it.

According to Office Online and Nancy, Bill Gates used pptPlex technology at the CEO Summit in May of 2008 on a huge touch screen computer. I’m not a CEO so wasn’t there in person, but have viewed the keynote online and can honestly say that with the exception of the huge touch screen, I was able to produce a very similar presentation with the same bells and whistles. You can too if you download the free pptPlex add-on. After you install pptPlex it adds a new tab to the Office ribbon.

If you use this, let us know how it worked for you. Even better, a linkk to the presentation would be great!

When Microsoft and Cray team up, everybody wins!

This dynamic duo is bringing high productivity supercomputing into the mainstream. Cray CX1 supercomputers with Microsoft Windows® HPC Server 2008 and Intel Xeon Processors provide “Ease-of-Everything” for new users of HPC for as little as $25,000. 3 easy steps to enter:

Register now!
Download the Cray CX1 and Windows HPC Server 2008 datasheet.
Download the free 180-day Windows HPC Server 2008 evaluation copy.

*NO PURCHASE NECESSARY. Open only to authorized representatives of US companies who do not manufacture, sell, or resell server hardware for use at high performance computing workloads. Game ends January 31, 2009. Winners will be announced on February 12, 2009.

SuperDuoSuperSweeps Privacy Statement

(Last updated: November 5, 2008)

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Collecting Your Personal Information
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In support of these uses, Microsoft may use personal information to provide you with more effective customer service, to improve the Site and any related Microsoft products or services, and to make the Site easier to use by eliminating the need for you to repeatedly enter the same information or by customizing the Site to your particular preference or interests.

Robert Lane and Dr. Stephen Kosslyn posted an intriguing article on how to use brain research to built better powerpoint presentations. In you’re job or small business, you use Powerpoint, these are some great tips!

▪ Provide Detail: If showcasing a product, for example, have short video clips available that demonstrate its operations, along with pictures displaying various views, zooms, and environments. Obviously such imagery is especially helpful if the product is not available at the speaking location. Show and tell.

▪ Shape Emotions: You’ve been asked to give a talk about the dangers of tobacco use. A bullet list might do the job, but imagine the greater emotional impact provided by showing yellowed teeth, blackened lungs, and mouth cancers. Emotions can be powerful motivators and pictures tap directly into our emotions, at the deepest levels.

▪ Lay Down Context: You can provide a priceless benefit to audience members by grabbing a digital camera and documenting the environment and context surrounding your subject matter. Try to capture what you see through your eyes or imagine in your mind and bring that world to your audiences. They will relate to your topics and perspectives with greater ease.

▪ Simplify or Clarify Complexity: Those of you who present technical information are well aware of how confusing your specialty may be to people in related fields, or sometimes even to experts in your own field. Showing pictures, video, and animations to make topics more concrete will help viewers connect the concepts you express verbally with experiences they’ve already stored in memory.

▪ Give Examples: The phrase, “Here, let me show you what I mean”, is one of the most potent set of words you can utter as a speaker. It rivets attention in expectation of visual relevance, something the brain appreciates very much. Whether it’s warranted or not in this age of photoshopped illustrations, for most of us, seeing is believing.

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